The Riddle of Summer Days

Margaret sat on her back porch, watching six-year-old Lily run circles around the swimming pool. The late afternoon sun cast golden ripples across the water, much like it had forty years ago when her own children had splashed in this same pool on summer evenings.

"Grandma! Grandma!" Lily called, waving something small and rectangular in her wet hand. "I found your iphone floating!"

Margaret chuckled softly. Her grandchildren had bought her the phone last Christmas, insisting she needed to "join the modern world." She mostly used it to store pictures of great-grandchildren and occasionally FaceTime with her sister in Arizona.

"Thank you, darling," Margaret said, accepting the damp device. "You know, when I was your age, we didn't have these magic screens. We had riddles."

"Like the sphinx?" Lily asked, climbing out of the pool and wrapping herself in a fluffy towel.

Margaret's eyes twinkled. "Exactly like the sphinx. My grandmother—your great-great-grandmother—used to sit me on her knee and tell me about the creature who asked travelers: 'What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?'"

"A person!" Lily crowed. "Baby crawling, grown-up walking, old person with a cane!"

"Very good," Margaret said, her heart swelling with pride. "She taught me that life is like that—always changing, always moving forward. Some days you're running as fast as you can, and other days you're swimming against the current. But the secret, she told me, was that wisdom comes from accepting all the seasons of life."

Lily leaned her head against Margaret's shoulder. "Are you in the three-legs part, Grandma?"

Margaret laughed, a warm, rumbling sound. "Some days, my sweet. Some days. But you know what? I've discovered something my grandmother never mentioned."

"What?"

"That the best part isn't solving the riddle," Margaret said, kissing the top of Lily's damp head. "It's passing it down to someone who will someday solve it for their own grandchild. That's the real answer."

Lily considered this, her young brow furrowed in concentration. Then she jumped up. "Okay! Now you have to come swimming with me! That's wisdom too!"

Margaret set the phone on the table and stood, her joints creaking slightly. "You know what, Lily? You're absolutely right. Some wisdom comes from thinking, and some comes from splashing."

Hand in hand, they walked toward the pool, two generations swimming together through the warm waters of a summer afternoon, carrying forward the oldest riddle of all—how to love well across the years.